Mary Bowser

Mary Elizabeth Bowser (1846-1867) was an African-American Union spy during the American Civil War.

Biography
Mary Jane Richards was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1846, and she was enslaved by John Van Lew and Eliza Baker, the parents of Elizabeth Van Lew. She was sent to school in the North, and she took part in a missionary journey to Liberia from 1855 to 1860 before being freed. During the American Civil War, she chose to spy for the Union in the heart of the Confederacy, posing as a laundress in order to spy on the Confederate Executive Mansion. She secretly read documents and listened to conversations, passing along useful information to other Union spies operating in Richmond under the direction of her former owner, Elizabeth Van Lew. After the war, she worked as a teacher to former slaves in Richmond, and she started a freedmen's school in Georgia in 1867. She died in 1867.